Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, we still have a lot of poor people. After spending billions battling drugs, it’s only gotten worse. Among the shooting wars, we won in Iraq, pulled out and now the enemy controls ground won with the shedding of American blood. That sounds a lot like Vietnam.

Afghanistan? Give it time.

We are, however, winning the battle against cigarettes. It’s also been about 50 years since the surgeon general’s report that smoking causes lung cancer. The smoking population has dropped since from 43 percent to about 18 percent.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of statistics from 2011 showed that 21.6 percent of men and 16.5 percent of women smoke. Is there any wonder women live longer? Forty-five percent of those with GEDs smoke while 9.3 percent of those with four-year college degrees light up.

Meanwhile, smoker-friendly areas are disappearing. In Georgia and Florida, smoking is banned in all restaurants and enclosed workplaces and Georgia’s University System regents want to ban tobacco on all 31 campuses.

Is there a stopping point?

A move to make all Glynn County property smoke free died last month. As current Chairman Mike Browning said, “We had all these exemptions. You couldn’t smoke on the courthouse grounds, but you could at the pier on St. Simons. Where would it stop?”

Thursday morning, lawyer Grayson Lane was puffing away between cases well away from the county courthouse doors.

He brought up a good point.

“Where are the juries going to smoke?’’ he asked.

“You’re talking about jurors in death penalty cases that give up their lives for days and weeks. You can’t deprive them and then tell them they ought to be happy and proud to do their civic duty,’’ he said.

Representing someone in court is stressful, Lane said, and smoking is his way of coping with it.

Years ago, George Hoyt, a good Alma lawyer, paced back and forth, smoking one after another in front of the Glynn County Courthouse. He wasn’t even sweating out a verdict. He was coaching Bacon County High School’s moot court team competing upstairs.

The ban on indoor smoking is an absolute necessity to protect nonsmokers.

People who keep their smoke to themselves hurt only themselves. Lane said his smoke won’t reach anybody coming in and out of the courthouse, and he’s right.

“They just don’t want to see me smoke,’’ he said.

But it’s the smoker’s personal war. If it’s not hurting us, we need to stay out of it.

Well written piece.
The second hand smoke contanmination program is a myth that I place right next to global warming as one of the biggest hoaxes perpetrated on the Public. The implementation of the ban is quite similar, although not as devestating, as the slow accumulation of the Jim Crow laws in the 20th Century in the South before their abolition. Both had science ( Eugenics for Jim Crow ) and the rule of Law behind them and were supposedly done with the best of intentions. Both were promoted by the political Left. As with the Baptists and the bootleggers example, there were others that profited from their implementation.
To many there is no argument that cigarette smoke hurts those not smoking. To that all I have to say is in reviewing the data and legal suits they remind me of the drunk and the lamp post. Do they use it for illumination or support ?